Banana Muffins

Please disregard the mutant Mikey Mouse figure above. These are my favourite muffins… uhmmm, and the only ones I make, really. Because I’m the only one in this house who eats floury stuff (so far; I’m hoping to draw Eria on my dark side once she’s old enough), I have to find ways to make them keep well. So banana bread (which the batter is originally for) doesn’t work for me. I’d have to slice it and wrap slices individually before freezing them. But muffins are perfect.Too perfect.

I think flour is the universe’s gift to people. I could not live without doughs, and batters, and breads, and cakes, and pies, and, oh, did I mention bread? And I’m totally not being dramatic here. I really could not. I tried it. A very skinny and good-looking friend of mine once convinced me to try the South Beach diet. You know the one: low-carb, low fat, don’t-eat-fruit-for-the-first-two-weeks kind. It was the only diet I ever tried and that’s because I was seeing my once waspish waistline grow bigger and bigger, all because of moving into a new city that was completely adverse to walking. (Yep, I still live here. What’s worse is that I moved to the ‘burbs, where the only destination is the once-biggest-mall-in-the-worl, which is about 10-12 minutes away from my house. Oh, umm, and I never had a waspish waist. Just fyi. There goes my non-dramatic point.)

Right, so, back to the South Beach Diet. My friend told me that when she started grad school, she also started packing on the pounds like starvation was in her future (which was the logical prediction, actually, what with grad degrees in the humanities). She said that the only way she got back to her own waspish figure (and she does actually have one) was with this diet, which helped her drop huge amounts right away. I trust my friend. I do. So much so, that I left my usual skepticism about miracle diets aside and tried this one. And it kinda worked. As a way of life, I mean. Over the next year-and-a-half. Oh, and just fyi again, it was combined with an exercise regime that included running a friggin’ half-marathon. Yep, that’s right. It totally worked.

But then I got pregnant and my love affair with bread and all-around floury stuff recommenced in an entirely renewed glory. And it continues to this day, especially with the help of the genius of artisan bread in five minutes a day. Yep, it’s as good as it is dangerous!

Anyway, enough talk, let’s go bananas (cheap one, I know):

Banana Muffins (yields 16 big muffins or countless small ones)

Ingredients:

3 over-ripe bananas

2/3 cup sour cream

1 stick butter (115 g)

3 eggs

lemon zest from 1 lemon

2 t vanilla extract

2 cups flour

8 T sugar

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1 cup walnuts (or chocolate chips, or Grand-Marnier soaked raisins)

What to do:

0. Set oven to 350 F

1. Cream butter w/ sugar with a mixer

2. add eggs and mix

3. add bananas and mix

4. add sour cream, lemon zest, vanilla extract and mix

5. combine and fluff dry ingredients

6. add dry ingredients to wet ones and mix just until blended

7. add walnuts

8. pour into buttered muffin tins

9. bake for 25-35 mins until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean (start checking for doneness after 25 minutes)

10. take out of the oven and let rest for 5-10 mins then transfer to a rack and enjoy warm or cold. They’re yummy either way.

11. Freeze as many as you think won’t get eaten in the next couple of days and enjoy for days to come.